"timing is everything." "there are no coincidences." "truth is stranger than fiction."

after attending a meeting of the "37th district democrats" last night, (at which our segment of this homeless advocacy organization, was, as she put it "punked out" by the parent organization), one of my housemates (a french woman who uses the email handle "ibukole" and seems to be, at least, an initiate), passed the following on to me:

_________________________

I re read this Pataki it s about the sacredness and importance of the poor helping the poor

Wonfa nyem,
Listen, hear, and remember:
SALT AND ORANGES

A story of Oya and Oshun:
The First Meeting

It was a drought in Biafra that brought together the strangers. One was from the coastland, a rice grower of a Southland tribe, used to the delta and the brackish waters. One was of the jungle, and the lush plants which grew near the river. Yet the famine brought them together.

The fisherwoman had traveled inland on a dusty bus, hoping to find food for her starving baby. The woman in the marketplace looked up to find this beleaguered stranger, wearing cast offs and rags, with an old rag around her child, thin from hunger. Here she had oranges and lemons, grown in a wet country, and this woman stepping off the bus was leached by salt and wind.

The woman struggled for a coin in the rags that she bundled around her child. Only a few shillings..was it enough...her eyes pleaded for an orange. The fruitgrower felt small beside her, though she was pounds heavier. A hand that was skeletal reached for the plump fruit on the cart.

Something moved her--but she knew that the woman would be wary. A traditional enemy with compassion? But the child, the child with eyes so wide reached--the woman's heart broke. With a tear she took an orange and tore it herself, and gave it to the starving child, squeezing its juice into the weakened mouth. Its mother turned eyes aching with abuse of weather and gave an almost smile. It was as if a dam broke in her as well and she sank to the pavement--too weak to stand. The lady took another fruit, knowing the woman was too weak, and tore it open, offering it to her, with tears flowing into the fruit, making it salty.

The woman grasped and ate, and understood.
The Second Meeting:

She did not go to the marketplace in-country again--but the salt on the orange still moved her. When she returned to Biafra and the child grew, she taught her well, and it became a ritual with them. Whenever a stranger came to town, as she grew older, the young daughter would watch, seeking for a face she would know--someday perhaps--in the crowd, and she would take an orange, and salt it, and wonder.

She learned the craft of her mother, mending the nets and taking rags and making cloth of them, for her family was poor. But every day, as the farmers came to market, she watched for an old woman--who somehow she knew she would know.
The Third Meeting:

And the soldiers came. Biafra was torn with the sound of tanks and bullets, and knives, and screams. And the marketplace was a shambles of rotting fruit. The young girl, now a woman of 15, searched the marketplace for her mother, who had gone out in the morning and not returned. She went to the fish market, but it was a wreck of timbers. Order had been restored, but some had died. Her mother was not among the bodies.

At a shelter hastily set up she found that the great marketplace had collapsed and many people had been injured. The healthcare workers were doing triage, seeking who they could tend once and leave to rest, and who required attention.

And then she saw the eyes.

It was a grey face, ashen with the scent of death. The clothes said Yoruba, and enemy, but the eyes were strangely familiar. A chance ray of sun broke through the roof and lit on the crumpled figure and the eyes shone with unexpected warmth, even in a weakened frame.

The young woman took an orange from her pocket, and with tears in her eyes, squeezed it into the mouth of the crippled form, salty. It was as if strength flowed from her body and the woman breathed deeply, and sighed, and then fell gently into dreams.

The medics found them both asleep. One on a pallet, the other grasping the others hands as if in prayer--the young woman dressed in the black of the wharves, and a woman dressed in the fire of the hills--Oya had repaid Oshun at last.

seems to fit a few things that seem to be happening: are noi/obama offering a "salty orange"? might that be something that "Black" men and "Black" women can/could/should share? might the concept be something of value within the "Black" community?

(the title? a robin williams quote from "reality, what a concept".) ("all around the world", digital underground's "same song")